


Lazarus

by AnonymousPumpkin



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: (that last one is kinda more only if you wanna read it that way), (totes up to you), Fantasy AU, Gen, Necromancy, mentions of past liara/shepard, mentions of past miranda/jacob, the nondescript fantasy au that absolutely no one asked for, vague descriptions of husks, vague descriptions of reapers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 03:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6407113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousPumpkin/pseuds/AnonymousPumpkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had never told her that it was impossible, or even that it was forbidden. They had only warned her that it was...inadvisable. On the thirtieth day of the Reaper War, Miranda did the inadvisable.</p><p>Nondescript fantasy apocalypse AU in which Shepard is a long-dead warrior of legend, and Miranda is a necromancer. Basically a really long narration of what should really be a multi-chapter epic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lazarus

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is. Why am I writing this instead of working on Our Ersatz Commander? Who knows. I literally had the idea for this at like...four in the afternoon while waiting for the bus. There is no real backstory, no real development, no real plot....just 9500 words of A Really Good Idea, apparently. This is yet another "Cal Has A Great And Kinda Epic Idea But Instead Of Writing A Full Multi-Chapter Fic, It Just Decides To Write A Really Fucking Long Narration."
> 
> Also ngl I wrote almost completely while listening to the Skyrim soundtrack in between a literally week long marathon of Game Grumps. If it seems a bit unpolished in places, it's because this morning I woke up with the intent to publish it, and while doing my final edits added AN EXTRA 3000 FUCKING WORDS, and I decided about ten minutes ago that enough was enough and I was just publishing the damn thing. It's basically just a weird headcanon jam anyay, so...yeah. I'll shut up and you can read on.

On the morning of the first day of the Reaper War, Miranda woke in agony. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her stomach was in fearful knots. Her vision bled black as she struggled to beat back the overwhelming sense of _wrongness_ that was impossible to place. Pain wracked her body in merciless waves, and she imagined thousands of fish hooks digging into her flesh and _pulling_. It was hours before it stopped, and by that point her throat was raw from screaming. She knew the instant it happened, just as every magically attuned person did, but none of them had any idea how well and truly fucked the world was. It was a sickening and unfamiliar feeling, but somehow she _knew_ what it meant, and hoped it was not as bad as it felt.

It was only hours before she received confirmation of what she already knew: some hapless mage had reached too far into the well of power and had fallen in. The border was breached.

The first (and some more ambitious mages would argue _only_ ) Rule of magic had been broken. It was the first thing you learned when you began to wield your power, and failure to comply led to your being stripped of said power or, more likely, your being stripped of life. There were two known worlds (there were very likely more, but only two had ever been found), which were physically compatible but not spiritually so. Crossing between them led to dangerous mental and spiritual unbalance, ultimately resulting in an insanity so complete as to be irreversible. Any being that crossed the line between the worlds would go insane, driven mad by the instinctual need to tear the other world apart. Luckily there was a very thick line between the worlds, a kind of borderland where magic users from either side could walk freely and commune, though without the convenience of having a corporeal form. It was from this place that they drew their power.

So long as nothing crossed _through_ the borderlands, balance was upheld and the worlds were at peace. But if anything were to ever break through from either side…to call it chaos was an optimistic understatement. It had happened only twice in recorded history, though it was strongly suspected that such breaches were the cause of the downfall of every major civilization the world had ever known.

The first time it happened, it had taken nearly every mage in the world to close the rift, and an entire continent of land was decimated before they managed to beat the other world back. Though the rifts between worlds had been localized, the damage caused to the fabric of reality had been difficult to repair. The quarians paid heavily for their hubris: more than half their population was wiped out, and those remaining were forced to wander the lands of other species, driven from their ancestral home by the very beings they had stolen from the other side. In addition to that, they lost all their magic, unable to commune with the borderlands. The geth had been a nearly unstoppable force...and it was said that they were mere flies compared to what came through the second time.

The second time the border broke had been not nearly as universally catastrophic, or so everyone had been led to believe. No one alive knew what had truly happened. Centuries had passed, and the story had become so legendary that the truth was impossible to know for certain. The being that had come through was more powerful and massive than anyone could have ever conceived, and their mere entrance into the world drove thousands of magic-users insane instantly. The legend went that all of the nations had come together to push them back, but most instrumental to the fight was Shepard. They were believed to have actually been a single person, the most powerful and charismatic magic user known to exist (at least, to those who believed they had been a magic user; even that was no longer known for certain) and they had given their life in the battle.

The first time was trivial, the second frightening, but the third time...the third time was the charm. The third time, the world ended.

When the end of the world came, it came from the sky. Miranda considered this a personal betrayal. Her own nightmares were of the subterranean variety, and the sky was her comfort when her demons began to whisper words of doubt in her mind. The sight of the stars never failed to calm her heart and clear her mind. That she could look up now and see the deaths of thousands among the clouds was so deeply insulting that no one was surprised when she vowed that she would have a hand in the world’s salvation, if only to have a hand in the Reapers’ destruction.

The first Reaper came from the sky far from Miranda, but she felt the swath of life it wiped away as clearly as if she were among the fallen. Thousands upon thousands of human lives lost in less than a day. The messenger that came to inform her of the tragedy found her on the ground weeping, and she couldn’t hear their words for the screaming in her head. The souls of the dead swam before her eyes and slipped between her fingers, departing to destinations unknown.

The first day, humanity’s largest stronghold fell. The Reapers didn’t even give them the chance to scatter or to prepare a defense. Not a single person survived the attack. There weren’t even bodies left. Just ashes.

It was impossible to describe the onslaught of the Reapers. To put their power, their inevitable advance, into words was a task onto itself. There was no way to prepare for them and no way to defend against them. One moment there was peace and light and warmth, and the next the sky was black with bodies as large as mountains, hiding sun and stars and drowning out hope. There was no way to stop them, no way to even slow them down. It was like beating at a wave in the middle of the ocean. Even the turian empire, devoid of magic but unmatched in technology and unbreakable spirit, was crippled in mere days, going through more than a thousand primarchs in a matter of hours. The asari, ancient and unmoving and universally attuned, were equally decimated. The Reapers swarmed the skies of the world, and their screams leveled cities.

The third day, the batarians fell. The fourth, the turians. The fifth day, Miranda stood before the Illusive Man and they planned their offensive while the asari burned. He knew as no one else seemed to that there was no time to come together and plan, no time to worry about anyone but themselves. He always seemed to have a plan for every contingency, and this was no exception.

As far as she was concerned, Miranda’s life began and ended with the Illusive Man. She had been only thirteen when he found her and took her in, hiding her from her pursuers and arming her against her foes. Since then, she had dedicated her life to him, and by proxy had dedicated her life to humanity. He was the head of the House of Cerberus, previously an arm of the Alliance before a disagreement had forced them to sequester themselves in the nearly impregnable Cerberus Way. Miranda had found them purely by chance, though some considered it fate. The Illusive Man had practically raised her, allowing her to flourish away from the oppressive grip of her father. He did not believe in the _superiority_ of humanity, but he quite correctly believed that in the grand scheme of things, humans were overlooked and trod upon. When he said they needed to dissolve all illusions of moral superiority and abandon the idea of mercy against an unrelenting enemy, she accepted his word without question. That he had a plan, she had no doubt.

_“Go to the Prothean libraries at Eden Prime. You will find our answers there.” His back is to her, as it always is, and all she can see is the grey in his hair and the silver smoke trailing from his mouth._

_Miranda closes her eyes, trying in vain to blink away the images of death that are playing nonstop in her mind. “What am I looking for, exactly?” She hopes her doubt isn’t as obvious as she thinks it is. “Those libraries are ancient, archaic...not to mention well-traveled. I highly doubt there is any bit of unknown history to be discovered there.”_

_“We don’t need to_ discover _anything. We already have everything we need.”_

_“Sir?”_

_“What we need, Miranda...is Shepard.”_

_“...I understand, sir.”_

_It is a lie, and he knows it, but he still lets her go._

The sixth morning found Miranda on the road, leaving her fortress for the first time in nearly five years. She had only two companions. Jacob Taylor was a trusted ally, and the only person Miranda would agree to travel with her on such an important mission. Wilson, though they had less history, had been assigned to her by the Illusive Man himself, and so she was inclined to trust him implicitly. He insisted that the man had abilities that would be critical if this endeavor were to succeed. It was not secrecy that inspired this small number, but necessity. Miranda wasn’t sure she approved of sending a team of entirely mages (nearly every mage in the world was crippled or at least severely hindered by the devastation of the Reapers), but he insisted that there wasn’t time to gather a more diverse team. She only hoped none of them would go insane before reaching their destination.

She looked to the horizon without bowing her head, but the weight of every dying soul pressed against the backs of her eyes and rattled her teeth. She shoved her shaking hands flat against her sides and she rode until her mount could no longer lift his legs.

The seventh morning Miranda turned back and saw her tower in ruins. She closed her eyes and listened hard. She could not hear the Illusive Man’s voice in the chorus of the dead, but it was so loud now that she wasn’t sure she could have heard _any_ one voice.

She didn’t understand, but she didn’t need to. That was one of the first things the Illusive Man had taught her. There was something rather freeing in the knowledge she didn’t _need_ to know everything. In fact, she didn’t need to know _anything_.

The Eden Prime libraries were far, and Miranda didn’t reach them until the seventeenth day. By that point, the world was crumbling. Just as devastating as the destruction was the aftermath. Magically inclined humans began to go insane, driven mad by the unending screams of the dying and the unrelenting flood of power that poured from the opened borderlands. They became mere husks, emptied of anything but hunger and fear, as mindless and bloodthirsty as the Reapers themselves. Silence was a forgotten commodity now. The days were deafening from the roars of Reapers and the nights were alive with the screams of the husks.

It had been a long time Jacob and Miranda had been involved, but when he held her on the eighth night, talking in a low voice to try and drown out the wailing, she didn’t push him away.

Though Miranda wanted to make for the libraries and arrive in one journey, she wasn’t stupid, and she knew that such an undertaking was suicidal at best. Their mounts would die if she pushed them without stopping, and in their rush to leave, they hadn’t packed nearly enough supplies to last them to the library and beyond. She had no idea how long they would be on the road, or how long it would be before they would find somewhere to restock and rest.

The first town they stayed in was bursting with people. More than half of the people shoved in its walls were refugees from the west, where the Reapers had first begun their onslaught of terror. Miranda suspected that it was a human that had broken the rule…though it was the batarians that had been hit first, there were no batarian magic users that she knew of powerful enough to attempt such an endeavor to such a massive scale. That the Reapers had immediately spilled into the neighboring human countries, she thought, spoke volumes.

The refugees in the town were silent and mournful. They eyed Miranda and hers with no small amount of distrust. Though her abilities were not immediately discernible, her wealth was, and she wore the Cerberus emblem boldly on her chest. Even in the best of times that alone was enough to earn distrust. She had no doubt that many assumed she was a rich heiress fleeing with her bodyguards or her lovers.

Jacob walked around and spoke to the refugees around town while Miranda and Wilson looked around. It was easier for him to talk to the civilians than the two of them, apparently, who both got answers in the form of hard, blank stares.

“We…we all came from Mars,” one woman admitted to him. She was sitting outside of the inn where Wilson was negotiating their stay, which was a more difficult challenge than he’d anticipated, given that more than half the town was homeless.

“All of you?” Jacob looked around. Though they weren’t all on the streets, there were still possibly hundreds of refugees.

“Yeah. We were on the outskirts when it happened. We saw them coming, we saw…” She trailed off, and Jacob rushed to comfort her.

“Don’t worry…you don’t have to describe it to _me_ , trust me. I just watched my home go up in flames and all I could do was just…”

“…just stand there.” She finished for him. “And watch.”

For a long time, they stood silently staring at one another. Miranda watched from afar, biting her tongue. They didn’t actually have time for this, she was sure, but Wilson was taking his sweet time with the innkeeper.

“Yeah.” Jacob looked away, out at the horizon where they had come from. “I guess you don’t have any news from Mars? Things are pretty crazy right now.”

“Do you have family there?”

He hesitated. “…something like that, yeah.”

“Well…” The woman looked down, up, anywhere but at his face. When she finally managed to look up at him, her face was soft. Sympathy made her voice quiet, and she placed a hand on his arm before going on. “I’m so sorry, I…from what I saw…I mean…from everything I saw and heard…I’m pretty sure we’re all that’s left.”

“All that’s left?” Miranda shouldn’t have revealed that she was eavesdropping, but she couldn’t stand by after hearing such a statement. “Mars is one of the biggest countries in the Alliance—”

“…and when I left, it was in ruins.” The woman’s voice was hard now, and when she looked at Miranda, there was no sympathy in her eyes. “Mars isn’t that far from here—” her voice broke slightly as she made the admission, “—and we’re on the main road. I’ve been watching for couriers every day. If anyone else had gotten out, we would’ve seen them.”

Jacob put his hand over hers. “Thank…thank you for telling me,” he said. “I…thank you. I guess all we can do is hope…”

The woman sighed. “Maybe. I don’t think there’s much hope to be had.” She looked at Miranda, and back at Jacob. Miranda didn’t hear what she whispered in his ear, but she knew it was nothing kind. As they walked away, Miranda felt her eyes on her back, and heard the whispered curses on her heels.

“You have family in Mars?” she asked Jacob as they walked.

“Couple of close friends.” He said it casually, but she could read the sudden tension in his shoulders. “Maria. Johnson. Laurens. Couple more guys I knew from back when. They did some work in the academies up there.”

“…the magic academies?” Miranda chanced a guess, hoping for his sake that she was wrong.

“One of ‘em, yeah. From what I’ve heard, that’s right about where the Reapers hit hardest. Whole cities just…gone.” He turned away quickly, not that he had dared face her in the first place. “Looks like Wilson’s done.”

Miranda didn’t bring it up again.

Against her better judgement, Miranda agreed that they would spend the night in the town and leave very early the next morning. They had several nations to cross before they reached Eden Prime. It was one of humanity’s most remote colonies, and had thus far avoided the Reaper’s destruction.

She didn’t sleep that night. None of them did. Miranda sat up all night with her back against the wall, her eyes closed. She could hear the quiet sobbing of the father on the other side of the wall, who had come into town on their heels.

In the end, she was glad she had submitted to Jacob’s needling and agreed to let them rest. It was the last time they slept in a bed for the remainder of the war. Miranda woke to a drumming in her head that quickly grew into a single endless note, a deep warcry that shook her very soul. She fumbled blindly for Jacob, for Wilson, for _anyone_. She was literally dragged from her bed, though by who she didn’t know. She heard shouting, screaming, _screaming_! It went from the shrieks of the terrified to the wails of the damned, and Miranda ran.

The flight from that town, whose name she never knew, was a blur of chaos and sound and pain. She found her way out somehow, on a mount that wasn’t hers, mumbling around a mouthful of blood that was also not hers. She vaguely recalled throwing wave after wave of magic, batting away husks or humans, she wasn’t sure, but knowing that her own magic was ineffectual. She could feel Jacob beside her, no better off, struggling to keep them as well as everyone else safe. When she was far enough away to be in possession of her own mind again, she had no idea where she was, or how Wilson had managed to navigate all three of them from the Reapers’ grasp and in the vague direction of their destination.

They’d had the foresight to pack all of their things before going to sleep, and only Miranda’s mount had been lost. Wilson had managed to grab at least half of what she’d packed and bought, so they had not taken too heavy a loss.

Miranda didn’t look back once. She couldn’t. She was afraid of what’d she see.

They reached the library late in the afternoon on the seventeenth day, and there was no time for relief or rest. Miranda didn’t bother announcing herself or consulting with the keepers of the library (what few there were). She hadn’t the time for it. She could feel many other magic users here, and had no doubt they were searching for a solution just as furiously as she was. Some of them weren’t even human.

She ascended dizzying flights of stairs and stalked through eerily empty hallways until she found what she was looking for. Every person she passed was completely engrossed in their research, so much so that they didn’t even notice her walking by. Or perhaps there were simply enough of them here that one more set of footsteps didn’t matter anymore.

The libraries were grand in a way that could make the most powerful being feel small and insignificant. They had been built by the Protheans, and had been found mostly empty by humans only a few hundred years ago. They had been restored as best as resources allowed and it became a gathering place of all knowledge, though all knowledge humanity had to offer filled a small fraction of its space. The libraries were now considered “universal property,” meaning that every race could share and visit and store knowledge within the walls. Though the Illusive Man saw the diversity as an intrusion, Miranda couldn’t help but appreciate the vast store of information to be found here. Even the Protheans had left their wisdom, engraved in the very stones. Every inch of the walls was carved with symbols, words or spells or millennia-old graffiti. In any other situation, Miranda could have lost herself in them, wandering the halls for days trying to untangle the strings of text. Very few scholars, human or otherwise, had ever been able to unlock the secrets of the Protheans, and she was certain she could if she had the time. Unfortunately, time was yet another luxury she could no longer afford.

It was not difficult to find the records of Shepard. They were a hero...a bloody icon, and not just to humanity. An entire wing of the library was dedicated solely to them, which actually turned out to be more of a hindrance than a help. Shepard was many centuries dead, and every race claimed to have some secret knowledge about them. Separating fact from fiction was a paramount challenge. Even such minute details as the year of their birth was mired in obscurity and contradiction. In addition, anecdotes about their great power often seemed too great to be true, and there was endless speculation surrounding their legendary battle against the other world. Finding anything that was even remotely helpful was like trying finding a needle in a field. It didn’t help that Miranda wasn’t even sure what information _would_ be remotely helpful.

It didn’t take much searching, however, to find out that the very creature that Shepard had slain and lost their life to was a Reaper. Miranda had never seen one, but Jacob had, and the moment he saw the illustration, he knew. It wasn’t exactly the same, with the same kind of differences you could expect to find between two human faces, but in more than one instance, the being—Harbinger, it had apparently been called—was said to have referred to itself as a Reaper, or something similar. Whether that was the name of their species or simply a moniker taken when they crossed the border was unknown and irrelevant. They knew that what Shepard had defeated had been a Reaper.

What they didn’t know was _how_.

_“This is impossible, Miranda, and you know it.” For all that he is complaining, Jacob is also still looking. He is not attuned for this: he is more of a warrior than a scholar, though to her discredit Miranda is neither. Wilson is the only one of them that seems at home here, with his mountain of notes and cross-references. “How are we supposed to find anything helpful when we don’t even know what we’re looking for?”_

_Miranda doesn’t look up from the scroll in her hands. She is grateful that her back is to him; he can’t see how badly she’s trembling. She reads the same line over and over again, relating how Shepard supposedly leveled an entire mountain with a thought. In another scroll, it was claimed that it was a physical blow that caused such devastation, and not a magical one. Whether Shepard used magic or not was yet another point of contention in history._

_“Have faith, Jacob,” she says with confidence she didn’t feel. “If there’s anyone that can help us, it’s Shepard.”_

_“You really think so? So far all we know is where they died, and everyone knows that. That’s not terribly helpful, is it? The trail literally goes cold there.”_

_“Have faith, Jacob,” is all she can say. Have faith._

On the twentieth day, the asari fell, and the aftermath was like being punched by a mountain. Miranda was immediately overwhelmed by the shockwave of power, the vast ripple of death, and the sudden silence of so many mages. She heard the screams of the asari in the library, shrill and mournful. It sounded so similar to the screams of the husks that she was instantly on alert…but husks did not sob.

Miranda’s bravado was proving to be just that. She was up all day and night poring over scroll after scroll, flipping through book after book, switching between scanning with her mind and with her eyes. So far all she had found was fables, tales of Shepard’s heroic acts even before their ultimate sacrifice. Jacob was right: the only sure truth to be found here was the place of their death, which was common knowledge. There were no firsthand accounts of their final battle, few reliable records of their many talents, and absolutely no information about their life.

On the twenty-fourth day, Miranda put aside her books and scrolls. The futility of her task was now impossible to ignore. Fatigue and monotony had only strengthened her despair. She was wise enough to know, however, that a break in the dizzying routine would restore her spirits and perhaps provide her with inspiration. She allowed herself, for a few brief hours, to wander the library halls almost aimlessly, picking up odd books and scrolls, reading a few paragraphs before moving on. She tried to put Shepard out of her mind as much as possible, or to think of them only in relation to what she was reading. She even spoke to a few others who wandered the library, apparently of the same mind.

She pushed the heels of her palms against her eyelids until she thought her head would burst from the pressure. She could feel the whispers of the Reapers in her mind, enticing her to give in to her doubt, to her panic. They had not yet come to this part of the world, where the border was stronger, but she knew it was only a matter of time before they made their way here...and until then their mental reach was still astounding. For one sweet instant, she longed to give in, to cease struggling and allow herself to be taken into the absolute freedom they offered her. When she opened her eyes, she stared at her palms, dry and trembling. She had left angry red imprints from clenching her fists, and as she looked at them, she realized that they hurt.

When she came back, there was someone else sitting where she had sat, leaning over the same book. Whoever it was had not even turned the page, which speculated on the whereabouts of Shepard’s final resting place. Miranda could still read the very words that had driven her away in frustration, which stated that Shepard’s body had been buried beneath the monument dedicated to their name at the Citadel. Jacob and Wilson were nowhere to be seen…probably resting.

“I hope I am not disturbing you. I noticed that you and your companions had been here for several days.” The asari stood up and faced her, leaving the book as she’d apparently found it. Her eyes followed Miranda’s every move, but it was difficult to find something intimidating in her open face. She was old; Miranda could see the weight of centuries in her eyes. “I know what it is you need.” She had another book in her hand, thinner and nearly crumbling with age. “You’re looking for Shepard.” Her blue eyes flashed and she almost smiled. That she did not was somewhat comforting. “You’re looking in the wrong place.”

She held out the book, an invitation and a challenge. Miranda read carefully, knowing that there was little guarantee that what she found within was the truth. Something about the way Liara had said Shepard, though…

What she read was…not about Shepard. It was…a book of spells. Old spells. Spells she didn’t recognize. Every page was spotted with age and ink stains, and there was a scrap of paper sticking out of a spot near the back. She read it very slowly…and then read it again, quickly. Her eyes came up, wide and shocked. Liara returned her gaze, sad and resigned.

“You realize now why the Illusive Man sent you to me?”

Miranda’s chest clenched. “You know where Shepard…”

“I know where they really died,” Liara confirmed. “I know where you can find their weapons, their armor, and their body…if, of course, their body still exists. Even if they don’t…that’s all you need, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” The room spun as Miranda realized that her _search_ was over, but her task was by no means complete. She had hoped to find a weapon or wisdom within these walls…but what she had found was much more dangerous.

Once again, Miranda was robbed of what little time she had had in the first place. She had barely finished gathering her things. A deafening roar, like a hellish war trumpet, split the air, and she ran.

They left literally minutes before the Reapers levelled the library. Miranda wondered if they knew what she was trying to do, and if they were actively trying to stop her. She didn’t have time to wonder too hard; Liara set a hard pace, and had apparently been well prepared for this moment. Their mounts were already prepared, and by the time Miranda settled herself in her saddle, Liara was already out the gate. Ignoring Wilson’s annoyed cries for explanation, Miranda set after her. She didn’t look back, not even when the library itself began to scream. It was a beloved and sacred place, so exalted that it had grown a soul of its own, and while not defeated, it was broken to pieces by the Reapers, who without glee or remorse tore it apart with an unstoppable flood of fire. Whether anyone else escaped was impossible to know through the darkness that settled over her mind, but Miranda could hope.

On the twenty-fourth day, Eden Prime fell, and the world was a darker place.

Liara didn’t tell them where she was taking them until they were far enough away from the library that they couldn’t feel the pressure on their minds. The Reapers could hear, she told them, and this was one secret they needed to hold on to. She was taking them to Shepard’s final resting place, where they had fallen in battle many centuries ago.

Now that they had the time, Liara took the time to explain…part of her story. A very small part, from what Miranda gathered.

It turned out Liara was far older than she looked, and far more valuable than Miranda would’ve guessed. She had actually been alive at the same time as Shepard. This in itself was not necessarily unusual; there were many asari who had been alive at that time, but most of them had been in Thessia at the time, and had paid little attention to the news of a human legend. When they’d met, Liara admitted, she’d been barely more than an adolescent.

 _“Wait, wait…you actually met Shepard?_ The _Commander Shepard?” is Jacob’s first stunned reaction, and to Miranda’s surprise, Liara looks away. Her cheeks darken._

 _“Yes. More than_ met _them, I…I knew Shepard very well. I marched beneath their banner for a time, and…I knew them not only as a commander, but as a…dear friend.” Miranda can see, even from here, the way her hands tighten on the reins._

_“Were you there when they…” Jacob trails off, curbs the boyish excitement in his voice, realizing that perhaps it is a bit insensitive._

_“Yes.” Liara looks up now, staring off into the distance. “That’s where I’m taking you now. You’ll find what you need there.”_

It was difficult to stay quiet and let Liara tell what comparatively little she had to tell. She didn’t offer much insight into their life, or their personality, or the circumstances that had led to their fateful battle; some secrets, it seemed, were better off left to the dead. But when Miranda asked her in the dead of night, voice low and eyes looking spitefully up, whether she believed this was the right course of action, Liara nodded without hesitating.

“Yes.” Liara looked up. They were still a few steps ahead of the Reapers, but the distant black cloud darkened Liara’s star-bright eyes. “If there is anyone who can defeat them…it’s Shepard.”

On the twenty-sixth day, Liara woke screaming as an unspeakable number of asari perished in their northernmost colonies, which had up until now avoided all notice and had taken in fleeing refugees from all around. She led them slumped in her saddle, and late that afternoon they delved deep into the mountains of Alchera, a desolate arctic land strong with magic. Why Shepard had made their last stand here, she had refused to say, but it was obvious from the way she looked around that she remembered everything that had happened centuries ago.

Unlike Eden Prime, where the border was thick and comforting, the line between the worlds was thin here, and if she squinted, Miranda could see the shadowy silhouettes of borderlands creatures as they roamed. And yet there were no Reapers over Alchera’s sky. Miranda thought at first that they simply hadn’t gotten around to it yet, but she knew deep down that wasn’t the truth.

Liara led them through passes and ruins abandoned for too long to remember. She said in hushed tones that even when she had last come here, it had been abandoned for centuries. Alchera was a crossroads, and no one lingered if they could help it.

On the twenty-eighth day, they found the ruins of a tower still burning with power. Trembling beneath its fallen stones was a host of refugees and exiled priests who found safety in the wards that still lingered here.

Miranda questioned them for hours, had Jacob and Wilson turn the place upside down, but they didn’t find what she was looking for. Liara admitted that she had known that Shepard had fallen at the top of the tower, but didn’t know what the centuries had done with their remains. They were left to search the tower by hand or, in Wilson’s case, with magic. That was how he was attuned: if he knew what he was looking for, he could find anything. Miranda’s vague instructions (“anything that I can use”)

“What is it you need?” he asked her in a rage, after she instructed him for the tenth time to stretch his mind further. “I can’t find _anything_ if I don’t know what you’re bloody looking for!”

Miranda faltered. She...she didn’t know what she needed. She needed bones or hair or flesh if she could...but she knew that those things had long been lost to time. Shepard had been dead for a very long time. They were dust now, and she could not commune with dust. In the end, all she could tell him was to search for “anything useful,” which was an endeavor as fruitless as searching the library had been.

The twenty-eighth night, Miranda climbed to the top of the tower, where Liara had told her Shepard had made their final stand. There were places where the stone should have failed and the tower crumbled, but it remained miraculously upright. The magic that had kept this place alive was beyond anything Miranda had ever felt, besides the Reapers themselves, and it strengthened her resolve. Liara hadn’t told her the significance of this place, but it must have been important for Shepard’s will to remain so strongly here.

For the first time since she had set out, Miranda was still. It was quiet here. No matter how hard she strained, she couldn’t hear the deep battle cries of the Reapers nor the anguished wails of the husks. Even the whispers in her mind had quieted, lost in the soft whisper of snowfall. The sky above her was clear. For the first time in a month, Miranda looked up and she _saw_ the sky. An endless expanse of stars winked at her, discolored and slightly warped from the puckering of reality’s edges, but still _there_. Wispy clouds drifted across the blackness, dimming but never blocking the light. There were some mages, she’d heard, who could read the future in the stars. She wondered what they were seeing now, if they knew already whether she would succeed or fail.

She walked in circles around the empty tower, where the wind was the only voice. Most of the wall was gone. It was crumbling, as if something had exploded with great force from within the tower. She could see bits of the tower scattered across the landscape, great blocks of shadow protruding from the otherwise unbroken expanse of snow. She could feel the power here as a caress on her skin. It kept her warm even in the dead of the arctic night. It was more than just the thinness of the border...something monumental had happened here, something that had changed the course of history without anyone truly knowing how, and the very stones still sang of it in awe. The mountains, the sky, even the snowflakes that fell whispered Shepard’s name, murmuring their story in voices too low to hear. This had been the seat of Shepard’s power. Whether they had been a warlord or a battlemage was no longer known, and no longer relevant.

The battle that had taken place here was lost, as so much was, to myth. Though the geography was different, Miranda could reasonably assume that some elements of the old stories must have been true. There were whispers of a great betrayal, of an entire population laid to waste. There were stories told of the greatest army ever known, led by the most brilliant commander.

Miranda inched forward, closer to the edge. Her stomach felt tight and her breath caught in her throat, but something drew her forward. The snow whispered, the sky sang, the stones begged. She moved closer, closer, ever closer to the beckoning abyss...and her foot struck something.

It was a pile of rock, buried beneath a thick layer of ice and snow. Urged on by the soft chorus, Miranda pulled it apart. The snow was immediate agony, so cold and hard that it was like plunging her hands into melted steel. She ignored the hot needles beneath her flesh, telling herself it would be only a few minutes until her fingers went completely numb. She pried apart rocks that had been resting together for so long they had forgotten they were separate bodies, shifting the foundation of something long dormant. She froze when her palm laid against not rough stone, but smooth steel, so cold that it stuck immediately to her flesh.

For a long time, she could not move. She knew that this was what she had been searching for. Carefully, she lifted the thing out of the snow, half-convinced it was going to crumble to dust in her hands.

It was a helm, so ancient that all color had faded and the symbols carved into its crown had long eroded. She didn’t recognize the design, but she didn’t need to. She already knew what it was. It pulsed with latent and powerful magic, the source of this tower’s protection, but she knew that it was not a spell that had defended this place. It was a _will_. Any doubts she might have had vanished when she held it.

The helm sang to her, guided her. She held it against her stomach as if it were going to fly away, and she followed its instructions. She walked to the very edge of the tower and looked down, ignoring the way her stomach plummeted. She could see nothing from here but snow and rock, but the ground waved away her disbelief.

 _Down here_ , it whispered. _Down here._

Miranda descended the tower. She gave the helm to Wilson.

“Find it,” she ordered, and he could do nothing but obey her.

Liara watched from the corner and said nothing.

At the base of the tower, he found a breastplate and a pauldron. Several yards away, he found leg guards, and not far from them, clawed gloves with bare palms. By morning, he had assembled Shepard’s entire suit of armor. Liara took it below the ground, to a place that was hidden and safe with a single window. She laid it out carefully while Miranda watched, fascinated by how precisely Liara put each piece into its place. She handled each piece with affectionate care, and Miranda felt more than a desire to save the world bleeding through the age-old barriers of the asari’s mind.

When everything was in place, they sat together. Liara handed Miranda the spellbook, open to the proper place. She would act as an aid, a guide, a well from which to draw power when Miranda’s began to wane. And she would be an anchor, a guiding light for Shepard to follow. Something familiar. The spell claimed the deceased would only return if they knew the way, and that the way must be lit with something solid, and preferably alive or freshly-dead, that they had known…in most cases, a body. A body, Miranda could not provide for them. A heart, however…

When the sun rose the morning of the twenty-ninth day, the first ray fell on the breastplate, and the entire room was filled with warmth and light. Warmth and light. The essence of life. Sitting before this beacon, Miranda could almost forget there was a war. Only the subtle pressure in the back of her mind, the soft sigh that was the dying screams of millions, reminded her of what she was here to do. Liara looked peaceful, so deep in meditation or spellbinding that not even the mice crawling across her knees woke her.

They stayed awake all day and night crafting the spell. It was equal parts repetition and guesswork, a patchwork of elements that could never be repeated. The spell they had stolen was ancient and untested and full of contradictions and fallacies. Miranda wove in her own expertise, her own desires, and her own failsafes. Every facet of it was a new sacrifice to be made, another part of herself gone forever, but no sacrifice was too great. Not for this.

She expected to hesitate, to doubt herself at the very last moment. But, perhaps for the first time, Miranda’s hands did not shake. She _understood_ , now, why the Illusive Man had sent _her_ on this mission. She had assumed it was because she was the best of his agents, the most trusted of his inner circle. But now she knew. It was not _who_ she was. It was _what_ she was.

_“What are you doing, Miranda? Is this some kind of weapon? The power in this armor is like nothing I’ve ever…”_

_“This armor is a vessel,” she interrupts. Her voice is short, impatient. He is distracting her. His purpose has already been served. “All it does is defend, and it cannot defend all of humanity.”_

_“Then what the hell are you doing? The Illusive Man told us to find Shepard’s warnings. Their secrets. They fought one of these things before and_ won _. We don’t need their armor. We need their_ knowledge _. We need their_ power _.”_

_“There is no knowledge to be found, Wilson, and you know it. We all know it. If we are going to win this war, then we are going to need more than words.”_

_“What… Miranda, what in the seven hells are you talking about?”_

_He is looking at her as if she’s crazy...he probably thinks she is. He thinks the Reapers are affecting her, driving her mad, but Miranda has never felt more sure, or more sane, in her entire life._

_“We don’t need Shepard’s_ knowledge _, Wilson...we need_ Shepard. _”_

 _“What...what are you planning to do with that armor, Miranda? Shepard is_ dead _.” He looks from her to the armor, back to her, and at Liara. He looks sick._

_Miranda smiles. The light from her spell makes it look sinister. The heat reflecting off of the metal armor is suddenly uncomfortable warm._

_“Yes,” she agrees too quickly, too casually. “Shepard is dead.” She leans in close, so close that he can smell the rot on her breath. “Shepard is dead. And I am a necromancer.” The light dances in her eyes, the gleam of madness or of genius. “Do the math, Wilson.”_

Necromancy was Miranda’s specialty. A frowned-upon art, and difficult to master, but not forbidden...at least not in the capacity it was practiced. Necromancy as it was practiced was not truly raising the dead, despite what the common man believed. There were creatures native to the borderlands as well, and many were eager for bodies. They were willing to submit themselves to a strong-willed master in exchange for the chance to be alive. It was easy for those inclined to the art to bind them to the bodies of the freshly deceased (or the freshly deceased, if your purpose didn’t require much physical strength).

Few had ever attempted to truly bring back a departed soul, and no one had _ever_ tried to do it without an actual body to bind the soul to. Miranda had no time now to find her colleagues and ask for their opinions, not that she really needed to. She had, as all young necromancers had, asked about it in the past, and she had studied on the powerful sorcerers of old who had attempted to best death. She had been vaguely warned against it, with her teachers speculating that it might, technically, be breaking The Rule. It was an unknown. No one had definitely succeeded. They had never told her that it was impossible, or even that it was necessarily forbidden. They had only warned her that such an endeavor was... _inadvisable_. Nobody knew where the souls of the deceased went, and so no one knew the consequence of summoning them.

On the thirtieth day of the Reaper War, Miranda did the inadvisable.

It was not easy. It was not precisely _difficult_ , but…it was exhausting. And confusing.

Reaching for souls from the borderlands was, to use as mundane a simile was possible, like plunging a hook into a barrel of fish. She was free to pick and choose her quarries, discarding those she didn’t care for. Reaching for souls from the dead was like fishing blindfolded from a waterfall with her bare hands. All she had to guide her was instinct and hope. She lost count of how many times she ripped the wrong person from their rest. It was a fight to rip them from the stream, but it was even more difficult to shove them back into place. It seemed that dead souls, like borderlands creatures, still yearned for a body. Each time she brought someone back, she felt a bit of her soul blacken. This was the price. Their soul for hers, her life for theirs. Her life shortened with every death she undid, and with every life she unmade. Luckily, quantity was not something the gods apparently quibbled about, and she knew she was losing days at most. What she would trade away when she found Shepard, however…that was another thing.

On the forty-second day of the Reaper War, Miranda pulled Shepard, kicking and screaming, from their grave. Unlike the other souls she had found, they did _not_ slide easily, and they did not go willingly into their body. The others had been practically ripping through her metaphorical fingers, chomping at the bit to get to the makeshift body she had prepared. Shepard, though…she almost had to force them into the metal. She felt something more in them, something besides mere resignation and exhaustion. It was if Shepard didn’t _want_ to live.

She found out why, or at least part of why, several hours later. In any other situation, Miranda may have been marginally amused by the slight _pop!_ of Shepard’s soul being pulled back to the physical plane.

The second their soul was ripped from the afterlife, Shepard’s consciousness returned to the confines of their mind, abandoning the stone it had inhabited until now. The mountain was stripped of their will, and Alchera was vulnerable. Miranda felt the Reapers approaching, heard the husks wailing. Her skin went cold (what skin she could still feel, that is) and dread settled in the back of her mind. They were coming. Across from her, Liara gasped, sobbed quietly, and waited.

They waited. Shepard was still. As still as the grave.

She expected them to scream, for some reason, and that only made their silence all the more unnerving. They didn’t move. They didn’t even breathe. If she couldn’t literally _feel_ their soul pressing against her skin and pulling at her own essence, she would swear the suit of armor in front of her was empty.

She jumped when she heard the painful creak of metal moving for the first time in centuries. Shepard clenched their hand…their gauntlet. For a long time the only sounds were Miranda’s heavy breathing and Shepard moving every part of their new body. She tried to get their attention and they ignored her. Or perhaps they couldn’t speak. She hadn’t really considered that. How could someone talk without a mouth?

Miranda’s skin felt heavy, pressing against her bones and organs without respite. Her mind felt black and empty, and her mouth was dry. It was all she had to stay upright and kneeling in front of Shepard’s body. She didn’t even have the strength to pray for success.

They didn’t have eyes, but Miranda knew that Shepard was staring at her, and she knew there was no gratitude in their gaze. She could feel their emotions distantly, like memories of her own, and she knew they were not happy with her.

Perhaps the real reason no one truly has ever raised the dead is that the dead didn’t _want_ to be raised.

It didn’t matter. Shepard’s displeasure was irrelevant. They had a war to win, and Shepard was their only hope. They could throw tantrums later.

When they looked at Liara, it didn’t feel quite so hateful, but there was a deeper anger, a hurt Miranda knew.

_“Save your anger for the Reapers, Shepard. We need you.”_

_For a long time, silence. The longest Miranda has known in forty-two days. Then,_

_“Reapers, huh?”_

_A harsh, wet sound emanates from where their throat should be, and it takes Miranda a moment to realize that Shepard is laughing. It is an awful sound, like listening to someone choke on blood. They laugh for too long, lift one incorporeal hand as if reaching for something just out of reach. The suit of armor groans and struggles to obey their will, and it takes a moment for their physical fingers to catch up to their mental. Miranda is glad they have no face; she does not want to see the smile that matches that laugh._

_“Reapers,” they say again, wicked and low. “Well...I warned them.”_

There was hardly any time to fill them in. The Reapers were coming.  Again, Miranda got the sense that somehow they knew what she was doing. She was almost convinced now that they could _sense_ Shepard, and were coming to put an end to the threat. Though logically she knew that they were spreading across the world indiscriminately, she felt as if they were breathing on her heels, snapping at her ankles everywhere she went. This was three times now that they had arrived at the cusp of her victory…but this time, they were too late.

The first thing Shepard said to her was a demand for a weapon. It was one of hers, a sword she rarely used. She was so exhausted that she could barely lift it, but she managed to place it in their waiting hand. They held it expertly. Of course. They looked it at it with no small amount of condescension, and even Liara’s lips thinned. Miranda refused to feel ashamed of her inadequate weaponry; most of the time, she had no need for it.

“For the Reapers?” She could hear their smile, wicked and taunting. “Hate to break it to you, but swords are all but useless against Reapers. Might as well be a drop of water to them.”

“Not for the Reapers,” she corrected them. “For the husks.”

That was about all the conversation they got before all hell broke loose.

They were deep in the ground, three floors below the surface, too far away to save anyone from the first wave. All Miranda heard was the distant screams as the husks tore the refugees apart. They echoed through the halls and through her mind, and she lost Shepard as the weight of the dead made her feet heavy. How Liara remained so energetic after they had gone through that ordeal together, Miranda desperately desired to know.

When Miranda stumbled above ground, feeling half-dead herself from the struggle of raising Shepard, she found nothing but corpses, and was as happy as she could be to discover they were mostly husks. She followed the trail of devastation to Shepard. They were standing in the broken entrance to the tower, watching the sky. She could feel their disgust, their anger, their sorrow, which even through her mental barriers threatened to bring tears to her own eyes. Miranda had no desire to follow their gaze, but she felt compelled. She looked up and the sky was black.

Miranda had never seen a Reaper up close before. She had fled her tower before they had come and had spent every day since then on the run. She had seen them at a distance as a great cloud of impenetrable darkness swallowing everything, and had shuddered in dread at the sight. She had felt the shockwaves of their rampage in her mind and seen the desolated landscapes left in their wake in her dreams. She knew, as everyone _knew_ , that they were a force of nature and looked it. But nothing prepared her for this.

She looked up and the sky was black. The Reaper’s shadow engulfed the mountain. It was a massive hand reaching down with death in its palm. It was unspeakably massive, bigger and louder and more powerful than anything Miranda could ever have conceived. More overwhelming than its physical presence was its mental. Still raw from her work with Shepard, Miranda was vulnerable to its crushing will and nearly drowned in its mindless desire to destroy. Its voice banished all thought from her mind. All she could hear was one word, repeated in an emotionless chorus, a passionless battlecry. A challenge.

**_SHEPARD_ **

Miranda was brought to her knees from the sheer weight of the word. Somewhere in her mind or in her ears, she could hear Jacob screaming, or sobbing, or both. She felt… _something_ knowing that he was alive, but the emotion was immediately drowned in black and red. Night and blood. She wasn’t even afraid. She didn’t even despair. She only accepted her own defeat, her own inadequacy. She looked up and she wondered how on earth she could have imagined that anything she did could be a match for this.

Shepard met the challenge without hesitation.

Miranda had grown up, as so many had, hearing tales of Shepard. They were the paragon of power, of might, though not necessarily of goodness. She would never admit it, but she had styled herself after what she had always imagined them to be: ruthless, cunning, and always willing to do what must be done, and damn the consequences. Yet even she could not have thought that in the face of such an enemy, Shepard would stare up at the Reaper and _grin_.

They had no mouth, no teeth, no fangs to bear…and somehow that was _worse_. Miranda could _feel_ their glee, their bloodlust, and their determination, so bright that it cut away all trace of the black from her mind.

The first time Miranda saw a Reaper was incidentally the first time she saw a Reaper burn.

On the forty-second day of the Reaper War, the tide was turned.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I debated on whether or not to continue it past this point, but listen, I'mma be straight up...I did not plan a damn thing past this point. I may write a part 2, maybe from Shepard's POV, but... ¯\\(◉‿◉)/¯ Who fucking knows. At this point, I'm tired of looking at the damn thing.


End file.
